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title: Old SGI Drivers Being Removed In Linux 7.3 Over Security...
description: Two old Silicon Graphics (SGI) drivers — the GRU (Global Reference Unit) driver and the XP driver — are being removed from the Linux 7.3 kernel mainline due to...
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og:description: Two old Silicon Graphics (SGI) drivers — the GRU (Global Reference Unit) driver and the XP driver — are being removed from the Linux 7.3 kernel mainline due to...
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# Old SGI Drivers Being Removed In Linux 7.3 Over Security Concerns

**[Phoronix](https://daily.dev/sources/phoronix)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

Two old Silicon Graphics (SGI) drivers — the GRU (Global Reference Unit) driver and the XP driver — are being removed from the Linux 7.3 kernel mainline due to security concerns. The SGI GRU driver, which handles memory-mappable hardware resources on the system chipset, is only compatible with hardware no newer than the SGI UV2 series (released in 2012). Removing it eliminates 6,800 lines of code. The SGI XP driver, which handles communication between SGI SSIs, is also being removed since it depends on the GRU driver. The specific security vulnerabilities were not disclosed. This removal is part of a broader trend of retiring old Linux drivers, including others removed due to noise from AI/LLM coding agents.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://www.phoronix.com/news/SGI-GRU-Being-Removed>

## Questions this post answers

### Why are the SGI GRU and XP drivers being removed from the Linux kernel?

The SGI GRU driver is being removed due to unspecified security concerns, as it cannot be used on any hardware newer than the SGI UV2 platform, which was released in 2012 and has long been unsupported. The SGI XP driver is being removed as a consequence, since it depends on the GRU driver to function. The removal eliminates approximately 6,800 lines of code from the kernel.

_Developers tracking Linux kernel driver removals and deprecations follow these changes on daily.dev._

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---

Tags: [#security](https://daily.dev/tags/security), [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux), [#hardware](https://daily.dev/tags/hardware)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/old-sgi-drivers-being-removed-in-linux-7-3-over-security-concerns-jbi3yu4lm)

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